The director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement told a funeral mass for slain ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata today in Brownsville, Texas, that the United States and Mexico will “bring the long, hard arm of the law down on” suspected Mexican drug cartel gunmen who killed Zapata and wounded his partner.

John Morton, joining Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, told the funeral service at the overflowing Brownsville Event Center that the law enforcement agency will continue to see that the agents’ work “is done and that the rule of law triumphs over lawlessness and empty violence.”

Morton, a former federal prosecutor, added: “Acquiescing to the rule of criminals consigns our children, Mexico’s children to a hopeless and empty path. My friends: no retreat, no compromise. Our cause is just, our cause is right, there is no other way.”

Morton and the other top level Obama administration officials addressed the 32-year-old agent’s parents and family members.

Zapata chose a career “not of riches but of service and sacrifice &#151 a career of protecting people and their communities from criminals, a career of putting himself in harm’s way for the benefit of others,” Morton said.

Zapata and his partner, Victor Avila, were ambushed by suspected cartel gunmen on a highway in Mexico last week. Avila is recovering from two gunshots to his leg.

The attack represented the first direct assault on U.S. law enforcement personnel working in Mexico since the 1985 kidnapping, torture and murder of undercover DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena.

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